Gambling Away The Sal

I haven't traversed the river Sal as much as the Zuari and the Mandovi. It has much to do with geography as with anything else. Chinchinim, Assolna, Velim, Betul never ‘fell’ on the routes I frequented, except on occasions when wandering feet took me beyond Margoa in Salcete to Quepem or Cancona, passing Navelim, Chinchinim, Assolna, Velim, and Betul along the way by the Sal, on occasion squeezing past fishing nets drying out on the road in the Sun.

Consequently the Sal largely remained on the periphery of my consciousness, content in the belief that like forgotten memories from long ago it will dwell undisturbed in the recesses of time that has moved on, leaving untouched a piece of geography out of deference to the wishes of its inhabitants who, down the ages, sustained the land in as much as they drew sustenance from it, giving it character while deriving their own identity from it, that is until now.

The Government of Goa is pushing the State in the direction of Las Vegas, the Casino ‘Capital’ of the world. The fact that some local politicians from the coastal belt, known more for their muscle than intellect, are plumping for Casinos to be floated on the seas off Goa and on inland rivers has queered the pitch further, bringing the Government of Goa in direct conflict with the local fishing community who oppose the Casinos on the river, fearful as much of the culture seeping offshore and laying waste the youth as of the environmental damage that river dredging to accommodate Casino vessels will inflict on their livelihood. There is growing opposition from the local populace to the dredging of the river Sal to accommodate a Casino vessel floated by Hotel Leela to cater to well-heeled tourists and attract more of the same.

It was last October, on the eve of Diwali, that we rode down the winding roads, past Assolna and Velim along the Sal, stopping by the fishing Jetty at Cutbona to take in the early morning calm off the river and making small talk with fishing hands from Orissa employed on small Goan fishing vessels anchored in the waters. Maria Bai lay in the safety of the jetty, resting easily among the vessels crowding the waterfront, listening to voices floating in from the decks where youth bent over fresh catch of fish while local villagers gathered by the vessels to buy the catch straight off the decks. A warm sunshine had settled in while trees stirred in the gentle breeze.

At times of such serenity it is difficult to imagine the transitory nature of outward calm, belying the feeling of continuity that nature in its primeval state evokes even while disturbing currents might simmer within inches of the surface, threatening to upset the balance of the very same continuity. It is this state of well-being like the one we experienced on the banks of the Sal that day that I most fear, for it is when one begins to favour a state of permanence that its fragility begins to unravel.

If you believe that tourism should merely limit itself to facilitating transportation and basic accommodation of visitors without either changing or altering the identity of the local populace or mortgaging their livelihood to commercial interests of a few then you might want to write in to the below to express your concern and/or protest the decision of the Government of Goa to gamble away the Sal to Casino players with large stakes in the Five Star Hotels dotting Goa’s coastline.

Chief Minister of Goa - Mr. Digambar Kamat
Minister for Fisheries (Govt. of Goa) - Mr. Joaquim Alemao
Minister for Tourism (Govt. of Goa) - Mr. Francisco Pacheco
Minister for Water Resources (Govt. of Goa) - Mr. Filipe Rodrigues

Note: The link to the Council of Ministers page is available under the menu Government accessible at http://www.goavidhansabha.gov.in/. You can access the E-mail Ids of the above by following the respective links on the Council of Ministers page.

In addition to the above, the following Stakeholders matter as much

Captain of Ports: cpt-port.goa@nic.in
Chief Secretary (Govt. of Goa): cs-goa@nic.in
Director (Goa Tourism): dir-tour.goa@nic.in
Governor of Goa: gv.goa@nic.in
Director (Information and Publicity): dir-info.goa@nic.in
Director (Irrigation and Water Resources): dir-irri.goa@nic.in
Director (River Navigation): dir-rnvd.goa@nic.in

Your voice might help make a difference.

Stopping by Hassan's on Onam

In my previous post there is no photograph of Krishnadas, the Keralite coconut vendor, for I never got around to taking his picture. In this post there is one of Hassan, a coconut vendor from Kerala whom I met in Mumbai on Onam earlier in the week while on an errand. Hassan is a Muslim. I was drawn to the pookkalam, flower decoration, that he had put together on the footpath by his cart piled high with tender coconuts from Gujarat, wishing passersby ‘Happy Onam’. On August 27th Onam ushered in Chingam, the first month of the Malayalam calendar (Kollavarsham). Onam is also known as Kerala’s harvest festival.

“Tomorrow I’ll get the new load from Mysore,” he said when I asked him ‘How come you don’t get coconuts from Mysore while others do?’ Like Hassan, most coconut vendors that I meet in Mumbai hail from Kerala, and largely source coconuts from Mysore in Karnataka. Hassan buys tender coconuts from Gujarat and Mysore every alternate day, an unusual arrangement I thought.

I couldn’t quite catch his name the first time he pronounced it. Even a common Muslim name like Hassan sounds different when pronounced by a Malayalee (a Malayalam speaking native of Kerala). He smiled at me and said, “Call me Babu, everyone calls me that.” I knew another Keralite years ago who was nicknamed ‘Babu’. He used to amuse himself by peeling stickers from his new underwear and sticking them to the front door of the rented dwelling he shared with his elder brother and Bijoy. I used to visit Bijoy after school to go cycling. Out of earshot Bijoy and I took to calling him ‘Pintex’ after the brand he wore and whose sticker stared at me each time I knocked on the door to rouse Bijoy from his afternoon nap!

The festival of Onam owes its origins to the legend of the Asura (demon) king Mahabali who ruled Kerala benevolently, and was much loved by his subjects. He was a staunch devotee of Lord Vishnu. However, the Lord was concerned for Mahabali for, King Mahabali was full of ego, believing nothing to be beyond him. To rid his devotee of ego and humble him, Lord Vishnu took the guise of a dwarf Brahmin, Vamana, and approached King Mahabali. Deluded by his abilities and blinded by ego, King Mahabali, oblivious of Vamana’s real self offers Vamana anything he would care to ask for, believing he could grant any wish asked of him. Vamana asks the King for three paces of land, to which King Mahabali agrees.

Vamana measures out his first pace and it spans the skies, his second pace spans the netherworld, covering all. Astounded and realizing that Vamana’s third pace would cover Earth, possibly destroying it and with it his kingdom and his people, King Mahabali offers Vamana his head for the third and final step to save his people. Before banishing the King to the netherworld with his third pace Lord Vishnu grants Mahabali a boon. The King asks to return from exile once a year. It is this homecoming of its beloved king each year that the state of Kerala marks as the beginning of the Malayalam calendar, coinciding with August-September in the Gregorian Solar calendar.

A variation of the legend of the Asura (demon) King Mahabali records the desperation of the Devas (demigods) upon losing control of the world to Mahabali, leading them to seeking Lord Vishnu’s help in defeating the demon King. The part narrating Vamana’s wish for three paces and the consequences it held for Mahabali is common to both.

Onam sees Keralites welcome the king with elaborate flower decorations and festivities that spans several days.

Hassan has placed coconuts around the flower decoration to alert passersby and prevent them from stepping on it. The Hindu festival of Onam derives from a common heritage, predating Islam by hundreds of centuries. Keralites around the world celebrate Onam irrespective of whether they’re Hindu, Muslim, or Christian. Pre-conversion religious heritage binds the population in a rare camaraderie that transcends modern day differences in welcoming the Malayalam New Year on Onam.

I ask Hassan if he misses being home for Onam. “Yes, I do, but what to do,” he replies, flashing a quick smile. Hassan is from Trichur (Thrissur) in Kerala. While I check my camera and fiddle with its settings, a steady stream of vehicles motor along the road adjoining the footpath before bunching up bumper to bumper for the light to turn green. A customer walks up to a makeshift table by his stack of green coconuts to use the PCO. For one rupee you can make a local call. He pays Hassan the rupee and walks off after making a phone call. Hassan turns to face me while I take pictures.

Hassan’s father came to Mumbai (formerly Bombay) from Kerala eighteen years ago to make a living selling tender coconuts. “I used to visit Bombay during my school vacations to be with my father,” Hassan says, pausing in front of the stack to pick a tender coconut for a customer who has walked off the road to Hassan’s. A wooden bin fashioned from planks nailed together serves to hold empty coconuts, discarded kernels and sliced coconut shells.

Hassan places the tender coconut on a narrow wooden plank held up by two short wooden poles nailed to one side of the improvised bin and expertly chops at the coconut to expose the white underside near the top of the coconut. A quick chop across the exposed top half opens the tender coconut, coconut water is visible within. Hassan picks up a orange coloured plastic straw and plants it in the opening before passing it to the customer.

“No, no,” exclaims the customer, exasperated somewhat. “Don’t cut it open. I need to carry it home, just chop at the top half and expose the white underside; I’ll open it back home.” So, Hassan passes me the tender coconut instead and while I drag on the straw, taking in the flavour of fresh coconut water, Hassan picks up another tender coconut from the pile on his cart and placing it on the narrow wooden plank proceeds to repeat the process as sliced shell parts drop into the wooden bin. Experienced coconut vendors use their bare knees for support while slicing coconuts with expert chops; a few others use their open palms. Hassan plays it safe. The choppers are razor sharp.

Hassan left Kerala for Bombay for good after his father died nine years ago to carry on the tender coconut vending business that his father left behind in Bombay. As he speaks the traffic on the street where the footpath ends drowns his voice.

Talking of his native place I’m reminded of my own trip to Kerala with Naguesh years ago. I had carried my camera along, and one photo in particular captured for me the essence of that trip. It was a picture I took by the backwaters off Cherthala near Ernakulum while Naguesh, Manoj, and Rose waited in the distance, a light breeze carrying snatches of their conversation to where I lay on the ground in wait for a candid moment in the open patch facing me. Not far from where I waited, a woman sat patiently by her black cow while it drank water from a metal bucket.

Three coconut trees on the periphery of the open patch rose as if in a Guard of Honour to a village woman walking on a narrow mud path along the backwaters fencing off the open stretch of land. Blue skies stretched across overhead while I lay on my stomach on the ground, struggling to maneuver the camera quickly enough to capture the trio at an angle while the woman walked past. Looking back now I feel that were I to try hard I might actually be able to recollect the smell of earth of that day. Maybe it had to do with the serenity, maybe it was the blue skies, or maybe those three coconut trees had something to do with it. I’ve no way of knowing for sure. Since then I conjure up Kerala in that one picture (above) I took that day.

“Kerala is beautiful,” I tell Hassan, to which he smiles and says, “Khubsoorat hai par kya karey.” (“It’s beautiful, but what to do”.) I suspect that his expression, particularly his wry smile, betrays a latent longing for a home long way down South. He finds Kerala expensive, the one reason that might explain why he made Mumbai his home, at least for now.

“Back home, everything is costly,” he explains. “If one is ill, they need to be carried long distances, and private clinics there charge anywhere up to 400 rupees. Yahan pe sau rupai mein kaam ho jaata hai," (Here, (read Mumbai) it gets done within 100 rupees). Hassan reels of more figures, pausing to attend to customers stopping by his cart while on their way elsewhere, and refreshed by tender coconut I imagine their feet acquiring sufficient spring to negotiate Mumbai streets. More empty coconuts pile up in the wooden bin as the setting Sun breaks through the clouds, casting faint light along the footpath from between former British structures across the street.

I finish drinking the tender coconut and drop the empty shell into the makeshift bin. It has stopped drizzling. I pay Hassan for the tender coconuts and with a small wave of the hand I turn to leave. He waves back, lending his smile to the flavour of the moment before the noise of the traffic lays claim to my thoughts once again.

The Coconut Vendor

I get off the back entrance of the bus, and look in the direction of the mass of people awaiting entry passes to get into SEEPZ, then dodge honking cars, rickshaws, buses, and people, and head for Krishnadas’ stall, the Keralite coconut vendor who sells tender coconuts sourced from Mysore in Karnataka on the footpath that runs along the wall fencing off SEEPZ from the traffic. On the wall behind him Krishnadas has nailed a small, framed picture of goddess Durga astride a tiger, and carries out his business under straggly branches that reach over the pavement from behind the wall which fences off SEEPZ from the outside world.

When I squint incomprehension on hearing him pronounce the name of the place he hails from in Kerela for, it sounded like Palghat, Krishnadas smiles at me and says, “Not Palghat. It is Palakkad, T. N. Seshan ka gaon. Main uska gaon ka hai,” he says with discernable pride, referring to the legendary Tambram Election Commissioner from Palakkad who doggedly took on the Indian politicians and is largely credited with significantly cleansing Indian elections of unbridled corruption and large scale thuggery. Tamilian Brahmins are nicknamed Tambrams, and are widely known for their intelligence, academic brilliance, and accomplishment in the arts. Down South many will credit their achievements in academics and the arts to ‘oh, it runs in their genes.’ That may well be the case.

“Palakkad borders Tamilnadu,” Krishnadas explains. In the 1700s, Palakkad saw a migration of Tamil Brahmins from the border districts of Tamilnadu. It was a large migration considering that Brahmin population in India is significantly lower than other communities making up the Hindu majority.

I lean forward to make out Krishnadas’ voice over the noise of traffic in the morning rush hour.

“Kaunsa chahiye? Pandrawala? Choudawala? Ya terahwala?” (‘Which one? Fifteen rupees? Fourteen rupees? Or the one for thirteen rupees?’) Krishnadas asks me in Malayalam accented Bambaiyya Hindi as I look at the mini mountain of green coconuts piled up on a makeshift table, and try to make sense of them by their sizes. To his left a shoe-repair vendor carries out his business from under a tarpaulin cover held in place by two bamboo poles placed between two pairs of stone blocks that were road-dividers not too long ago. The tarpaulin is strung to the wall by two coir strings tied to two rusting nails. To his left, a barber has set shop. His mirror hangs from a nail in the wall and faces a wooden chair. I’ve rarely seen the chair empty.

“Give me a paani wala, with some malai (white pulp layer),” I tell Krishnadas, asking for a tender coconut with fair amount of coconut water, and some sweet taste to it. Without malai, tender coconut water tastes flat, almost sour. He nods, casts his eye about the pile, picks one up, taps it, then places it on his knee, and taking a shiny, narrow-bladed knife from the three placed on a jute rag spread on the coconut pile, he proceeds to chop the coconut expertly with short, quick slashes, turning it over with each slash, exposing the upper part of the shell. Then he exchanges the knife for a broad-bladed one, and gently taps the exposed upper part, tracing a narrow circle as he rolls the coconut around in his open palm, eventually splitting it with a hard tap of knife before lifting the upper portion with the steel tip. Two office-goers step up to his cart, their identity cards dangling from their necks, IT workers.

He manages to sell over 150 coconuts each day. “I get them for Rs. 10.40 each, only occasionally do they reduce the price by twenty paise,” he tells me. “About 4-5 coconuts turn out bad in each lot. Then twice a day, I have to give two local policemen tender coconuts to drink for free.”

The bright orange tika on his forehead contrasts sharply with his dark skin. He replenishes his supply of tender coconuts daily; a truck with Karnataka number plate, ferrying coconuts from Mysore, stops by and offloads coconuts. “Sometimes they supply more, so I do not take in a fresh load the next day,” he explains. Tender coconuts left over from the previous day are sweeter; the pulp layer having thickened and hardened slightly, but if left longer the coconut water reduces in quantity and turns into malai, losing its sweetness. “Pandrawala nariyal kam jaate hain, din mein pacchas ke karib,” he says. “Log therawala jyaada lete hain.” (‘The coconuts priced for fifteen rupees do not move fast, only about 50 get sold each day. People prefer buying those priced at thirteen rupees’).

He passes me the coconut and a plastic straw. I turn to face the mass of vehicles heading down the road as I take a deep drag of sweet coconut water and swat at flies circling empty coconuts piled up in an open plastic tub on the footpath, and on his makeshift table fashioned from planks sourced from discarded wooden crates. The flies are feeding on tender kernel. I forget for a moment that I’ve tasks to complete as I lose myself in the cool of a hot day.

The Shiva Temple by the Bhima

It took me awhile to locate the black and white pictures. I found the album under a stack of books in my cupboard. As I opened the pages, the residual smell of the Goan monsoon leapt at me from the pages, discoloured over the years by an alternating mix of dry and wet weather. The paper had gone damp, and I resolved yet again to transfer the photographs to a new album before the monsoon came around next year. There is a very real danger of paper falling apart in the humidity unless the white ants get there first, in which case it will be gone even quicker.

I held the pictures to the light in the window that looked out on a teak tree shedding its leaves again, like it has done for five years now since the time it was a sapling in the year we made our home here. Since then Magpie Robins and Rufous Backed Shrikes routinely perch on its branches. I’ve been lucky to hear the Magpie Robin belt out sumptuous melodies perched on the teak’s bare branches. It is a timeless feeling to hear it sing so.

I draw the album closer to my face. A set of three black and white pictures show the family in the raised courtyard of the ancient Shiva temple at Havalgi, a small village in Afzalpur taluka, deep in the Deccan plains of India. In one of the pictures my uncle, the eldest in our family and dad’s first cousin, is holding a silver bust of Lord Shiva, photographed just before it was installed in the temple. Our family was donating the silver bust to propitiate the deity for a wish fulfilled as is largely the custom in the hinterland. Aunty is standing beside him, and so are my parents, Jai, and I. Behind us two trees rise up to the platform, and ascend to the sky, shielding us from the heat of the mid-day sun. I am bare-chested in the photograph, and so is my cousin, Jai. As I see the fading photographs now, a faint memory stirs within me and I narrow my eyes and scan the forms in the photographs.

We’d just come off from bathing in the river Bhima, now shimmering in breaks in the canopy behind us. Walking barefoot from the banks of the river where I had spent the morning floating in waist high waters, and up the incline that stretched over hundred metres to where steps cut in the fort-like walls led to the temple courtyard, it seemed like eternity. Soles burned as I half-ran the distance, shifting from one leg to another to minimize contact with scalding gravel. I was eight years old, and Jai, three and half years older. The entrance to the temple ran along the length of the raised platform that served as a courtyard, facing the Bhima to the north. Four pillars rose from the raised porch fronting the main entrance that led to the mandapa or pillared hall where later we, family members, gathered to watch puja being performed in the garbha griha (literal translation is 'womb house').

In Indian temples the mandapa opens into the garbha griha that houses the deity under the shikhara or the temple pinnacle, in this case the garbha griha housed the Shiva lingam. I always found the mandapa at this Shiva temple dark and gloomy but grew to like the atmosphere for, oil lamps glowed brightly and so did the arti performed during puja, the bell echoing in the confines while we folded hands and watched the priest intone Sanskrit shlokas as his right hand traced flaming arcs in a clockwise direction, the arti glowing bright as beads of sweat trickled down the bare back of the Brahmin priest while he rang the small brass bell by its handle gripped in his left hand. Tradition demands that only males be allowed entry into the garbha griha after a dip in the Bhima. It was young Pratik's turn in the picture while Vasanna looks on. In the foreground Achambhatt is intoning Sanskrit shlokas from a well worn book, yellowing as much from use as from age. To our right lay the silver bust of Lord Shiva that our family had installed years ago.

A Skylight lit up an adjacent room where large cooking utensils were stacked up against blackened walls. During community functions the utensils are lent out to visiting families for use in cooking, usually for a fee. Looking at the blackened walls I suspect some of the cooking takes place in that room. Out in the Deccan Plateau, particularly in the villages, it is not uncommon to find skylights in houses that are built adjacent to one another with no scope for windows except in the ceilings. I distinctly remember lying on the floor beneath a skylight and counting clouds passing that way until it was time to go out and play. Each room had its own skylight. It is possible to trace the 'path' of time by looking at Sunlight streaming down a skylight and tracing its path in the room as the earth revolves in the skies. My granny used to be very good at it. Standing there as if waiting for the walls to speak up I could hear voices floating in from the river behind me.

The Bhima, a tributary of the Krishna, ran low as it meandered past the ancient Shiva temple now displaying cracks along its outer walls in an earthquake years ago. At places in the walls cracks snake down along the length of beams. Originating in Maharashtra the Bhima had come a long way, passing through Karnataka on its way to Andhra Pradesh, covering 725 kilometres on its journey before joining the Krishna on its way to the Bay of Bengal. Behind me rocks rose from the riverbed, too hot to touch. Vegetation was set back from the banks of the river. Women ferried clothes in metal buckets to be washed in the river while young boys carried water ashore in brightly coloured plastic pots balanced on shoulders while women preferred to carry them on their waists, hands curled around the neck to keep the pot from slipping off.

In the years gone by pots used in hauling and storing drinking water used to be made of copper, heavy enough to survive impacts with uneven walls while being hauled up the deep wells using coir ropes that village folk usually made at home. Growing up I learnt to make ropes from raw coir, my hands and thighs turning red from the constant ‘rolling’ required in making ropes. Keshava, our farm-hand, taught me how. I also remember him using flint stone in lighting up his own brand of beedi, whose ingredients I was unaware of but which he diligently concocted, it took the form of a ritual in the afternoons. I used to tag along with him a great deal.

Buffaloes on the banks of the Bhima stood watching people, large brass bells hanging from their necks, their jaws moving rhythmically. Drops of water glistened on their hides as the Sun beat down. Their seemingly vacant gaze fixed on nothing in particular. Womenfolk from the village washed them down in the river, not far from where I lay floating a few minutes earlier, and after they were done bathing the buffaloes they handed over the reins to their children to walk them back to their homes, then the women returned to the rocks and reached for their basket of clothes and made for the flat rocks where they beat the clothes to within an inch of their durability, all the while their arms tracing quick arcs as they brought the unfortunate garment crashing down on the rock in a loud thwack. The current ran steady that afternoon and I had lain in the water watching soap bubbles from all the washing dodge rocks and make their way downstream lazily. In the monsoons the rocks disappear under surging water as the Bhima breaches its banks. Flash floods are not uncommon along its route, something my father used to caution me against.

On my travels to Gulbarga and back, as the red coloured KSRTC bus kicked up dust on rutted roads, bumping uncomfortably along Sunflower fields sandwiched between large swathes of Jowar crops, I always made it a point to peer through the window as the bus passed the bridge over the Bhima near Devangaon in Afzalpur taluka, not far from Havalgi. Unlike Afzalpur where I often stopped over at my Aunt’s on my way back from Gulbarga, I stayed away from Devangaon. To this day I remember Devangaon for the feud that led to 4-5 people being shot dead in the KSRTC bus while shocked passengers watched the carnage from the back of the bus. Later Jai told me that the fifteen-odd people involved in that carnage eventually died one after the other, done in by their colleagues in internecine fighting until none survived. At the time I was camped at my uncle’s place in a nearby village a few kilometers away while on a vacation from school.

That evening as the village came alive with kerosene lanterns or khandils as they were known, village folks talked in hushed tones of the killings in the narrow bylanes that snaked between stone houses by the narrow open gutter that ran the same length where sometimes pigs settled in to escape the summer heat. Bells sounding from buffaloes returning from grazing grounds punctuated their voices as firewood caught on in the open chullahs, blackening further the utensils as the tava warmed up for the bhakri (made from ground jowar) that village folk ate with spicy chutney made from hot chilly powder (khar pudi in Kannada) laced with ample garlic.

I remember this because I waited out on the steps in our large courtyard for our buffaloes to return home from their grazing grounds while folks sat outside on stone platforms fronting their homes. Behind them, in the open doorway khandils flickered in stone shelves (for want of a more appropriate description) carved out in stone walls and adorned with quick decorative patterns in red oxide painted with brushes fashioned from dried stalks of hay sourced from Jowar crops; over the years on my visits to the village during school vacations I helped my uncle decorate the shelves with simple patterns in red oxide paint, usually during Diwali when the house got a fresh coat of paint. On the outside of houses in villages in the Deccan it is not uncommon to find doors colourfully painted, usually in green or sky blue with floral patterns decorating the wall holding the door.

At the time of the Devangaon killings I was still in school and had little idea of death and destruction except maybe from Amitabh Bacchan movies, and it was not until a couple of years later when Jai and I came upon a man lying dead on a narrow mud path while we were on our way to the countryside in Gulbarga outside Brahampur (the locality got its name from being home to a large population of Brahmins or Brahmans who had made it their home over the years) to complete our morning ablutions since Guraj’s one room rental in Brahampur near the Raghuvendra Swami mutt came without a latrine, that I saw firsthand a murder for the first time. But that is another story.

On either side of the bridge over the Bhima the landscape along its route opens up the countryside and since most of my trips were during my school vacations that got over before the monsoons arrived in Karnataka I never really got to see the Bhima at full tilt, except maybe once. But that was a long time ago when the bus we had boarded in Gulbarga stopped ahead of the flooded bridge, waiting for the Bhima to recede while we, Mum and I, looked out the window watching the river in spate, flowing over the bridge in menacing silence. Several hours passed before we could see the bridge again. Behind us a long line of buses, Ambassador cars, tractors, bullock carts, and bicycles queued up. Folks had gotten off their modes of transport and formed circles where they stood chatting, some sipping chai from a roadside vendor. In North Karnataka, bus-stops at villages dotting the route are lined by little shops with tin roofs where wooden benches under sparsely leafed trees serve as seating space for villagers breaking for tea and snacks. It was no different that day by the bridge off Devangaon.

If not for the flooded bridge there was little to suggest in the mood prevailing among passengers who had gotten off their transport that this was no village centre and that folks gathered by their vehicles were strangers until then. Every once in a while they regarded the flooded bridge with easy patience before turning to continue their conversations. They accepted that every once in a while Mother Nature would have her way, and it made sense to let her. It was a part of life. India of the hinterland is different from the India of the cities and towns, and nowhere more so than in North Karnataka, or so I believe.

When I returned to Havalgi recently we missed our way past Afzalpur. A Shepherd pointed out the correct direction. His herd was a mix of sheep and goats. They kicked up a fine dust in trying to make way for us. As we motored past kilometers of black alluvial soil dotted with sparse, short trees and thorny shrubs known as jaali mullu (mullu is Kannada for thorns), I kept my eyes open for crops, particularly Sunflower where years ago as a kid I used to lie amid the blooms looking up at the sky and seeing shapes in the clouds as they floated past while bells tolled from Oxen tilling adjacent fields.

But ever since the Almatti canal found its way to the arid regions of the Deccan Plateau a few years ago, farmers have mostly taken to growing sugarcane, a source of much riches, and great despair if sugar factories face a glut in supply and turn away tractors heaped with sugarcane, leaving the farmer with little choice but to stir massive vessels with sugarcane extracts in making jaggery.

Reaching Havalgi temple that day was a breeze, but looking back now I cannot help remembering with fond memories the thirty kilometers we once did by bullock cart many years ago on our way from Almel to Ghatargi, not far from Havalgi, to watch seedi. There were 126 seedis scheduled for the day and we reached Ghatargi with only four left. To this day I can recollect vividly the throng of devotees at the Ghatargi temple crowding one seedi as they passed an iron hook through his back before hoisting him up by a wooden pole and rolling the cart through the village while hushed whispers sounded around me from necks craning up to watch the seedi suspended in the air from the hook through his back. The religious significance has only strengthened over the years. It had taken us a good part of the day to make the journey that day years ago, descending the rutted road into fields each time the Oxen turned flightly and skittish on seeing Karnataka State Transport buses bearing down on them in a fearsome cloud of dust. That night I slept soundly under the bullock cart like scores of villagers around me. Likewise most of them had traveled from far and wide by their bullock carts, some by buses, on their way to the Ghatargi temple.

Standing in the courtyard now and gazing at the Bhima through the trees it seems like another age now. Later in the day we were scheduled to leave Havalgi for Ghatargi to visit the temple there before hitting the road to Afzalpur, and beyond.

I wandered through the temple complex while four children and a stray dog peered intently down the raised courtyard in the direction of the Bhima, the very spot where several years ago our family posed for the camera with the silver bust of Lord Shiva. The trees were the same. Time and tide wait for none, but most trees do.

I walked down to the river and then back up again and turned in the direction of the pavilion along the perimeter of the temple complex where the blue door lay. A series of stone arches enclosed the raised seating area along the entire length of the outer perimeter wall to the West of the temple with doors built into it that looked out on vegetation on the hill where the temple was built. Sunlight streamed in through the open doorway cutting bright rectangles on the stone floor.

I was returning from talking with the temple priest. Mallappa belongs to the Lingayat community and is of short stature and wears Gandhi topi, and talks non-stop. He has known our family for a long time, and if that gave him the right to query me for details that I would not readily part with someone I’ve hardly met then it only meant I’ve been away from the hinterland for a long time. His brother was administering duties as the temple priest at the time. They shared the responsibility by turns.

While I sat talking with Mallappa on the raised temple porch, Nanasaheb (fondly known as Nanappa) beckoned me to where he sat with the priest, Laxmikant (known as Achambhatt in our family), on the raised platform under the stone arch of the pavilion that enclosed the courtyard to the West, a short way off the temple. I was only too glad to take leave of the garrulous Mallappa. As I neared them both, and like on each occasion when we've met before, Nanappa asked me again.

“So when’re you visiting Hungund? You should come over and stay with us,” he said, smiling. I couldn’t help feeling then that he might possibly have among the warmest smiles going around. It jelled well with his gentle demeanour. He was clad in a white dhoti, as was Achambhatt. Both sat bare chested like brahmins usually do during religious functions.

“Surely I will visit, hopefully sooner than later,” I replied sheepishly. Until recently he ran a bookshop in the Hungund bus stand for thirty long years before losing the contract to another applicant.

“I’m retired now,” he said with a smile and without a twinge of regret. I believe it must come from working at the same job for thirty years. It didn’t look like he would apply for the contract the following year.

“Aihole, Pattadkal, and Badami are only a short distance from Hungund,” he said. “You can visit them from Hungund.”

I nodded, having visited those songs in stone many years ago when I stayed with relatives in Hospet not far from there. Now I can only summon faint memories of that visit.

“I’ll make it before long,” I reply, reflecting on the reasons that willy nilly conspired in keeping me away from the architectural marvels in stone that I so delight in. I draw on my tenuous memories from that trip of long ago and imagine the stillness that passing time sculpted for posterity in my mind, and wonder if it will be the same the next time around. It probably will but I will have moved on in the landscape of my mind.

A warm breeze floats in from across the Bhima to where we sit talking. In time the clock stirs the noon stillness and Nanappa’s eyes grow heavy. He spreads a straw mat on the stone floor of the pavilion and nods off while a local villager sits leaning against a pillar, looking at nothing in particular.

In the distance familiar voices float in to where I sit by a large copper vessel astride two stone horses by the blue door. In those voices, uneven in the breeze, I reel back the years and find that though time has moved on, the timelessness of it has stayed behind, for good.

In it I find little difficulty in relating to a home that never was but that always beckoned me like only a home can.

Outside the Taj

I waited long for the balloon seller that day.

Behind me the stone archway of Gateway of India rose amidst the multitude milling about its base among pani puri, salted peanut, and ice-cream vendors, and looked out on the Arabian sea in the direction of Elephanta caves. Streams of visitors, some regular, others occasional, crowded the Apollo Bunder like they do every day of the week, coming from far and wide to lounge against the stone parapet and look out on colourful vessels, sea-worthy and otherwise, bobbing in the waters off Apollo Bunder.

The road runs by the Taj Palace Hotel where horse driven carriages, known as Victoria, await tourists - families and young couples - visiting the Gateway for a ride on Bombay’s old streets. The stiff breeze bends back their carefully set hair and blows it free, taking away with it inhibitions, and shrieks and excited cries swirl in the competing cacophony of revelers amid the noise of Taxis and sundry vehicles, drowning the sound of hooves cantering on the asphalt to the steady rhythm of the city – never rushed in all the rushing.

It is perfectly possible to be hearing all of this and still be deaf to it all, for such is the atmosphere in the evenings at the Gateway that it floods the senses with the joy of the outdoors, so much so that if not for an accidental glance at my watch I wouldn’t have known that it was over an hour now that I had been waiting for the balloon seller, my camera slung from my shoulder and a bhutta (corn head roasted over coals) spiced with a spit of lemon and chilli in my hand. Rains threatened overhead but hadn’t breached the bank of clouds that now rolled into the harbour. I had set out for the Gateway imagining in my mind just such a setting, only the colourful balloons were missing. All along, the monsoon breeze washed over me, invigorating me with the promise of life. It was then that I first realised that the three chauffeurs outside the hotel The Taj Mahal Palace adjoining the relatively newer Taj Towers hadn’t moved far from their cars in over twenty minutes. I had traveled a long distance by train that day hoping to capture on film the bounce of brightly coloured balloons in the stiff monsoon breeze against the grey of clouds rolling in from the west while faint light played out the evening.

I waited for a break in the traffic before crossing the road to where The Taj Mahal Palace rose from the sidewalk to tower over the skyline in a mix of Oriental, Moorish, and Florentine styles. Three chauffeurs waited by their gleaming black cars, talking. From across the road while I waited for the balloon seller, every once in a while I would pull my eyes away and look up at the majestic hotel, tracing my eyes along its contours, occasionally catching some movement in the rooms that together with the adjoining annexe number over 550. The stone shows no visible signs of aging from looking out to sea since 1903, the year Jamsetji Tata, a Parsi Industrialist, completed its construction to counter European prejudice that had kept Indians out of hotels and clubs frequented by Europeans who looked down upon them as royalty would commoners. The adjoining annexe, Taj Towers, was completed in 1972 and now stands where Green’s Hotel once did.

I find stone magical and it delights me no end to look at stone structures. In my travels across India, meandering in towns from long ago, stone houses seemingly belie the passage of time. I have grown to like the feel that such structures bring to the lanes they reside in. They imbue the locality with a permanence of an optimistic, letting time echo in the bends that curve away beneath Gulmohar or Copper Pod canopies in the middle of spring, washing sidewalks with their blooms and filtering sky light to dreamy hues that promise endless possibilities.

But there are no trees tall enough to tower over the Taj Palace, nor spacious gardens with flowering trees fronting its arches and framed windows. Instead the Taj sits in the middle of the street by Apollo Bunder like a petulant child reluctant to leave behind his candy floss blown asunder by strong monsoon winds. If I were new to Bombay, coming upon the Taj at the turn in a busy street would have startled me for I would least expect such majesty to sit so easily or so it seems among ‘commoners’.

The Smile

He stopped by the poster announcing the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, and so did his two friends while on their way past us in the Army and Navy building in Fort. They had the same uniform on. There is little to smile about when you're working as a Security Guard in Mumbai. I wonder what he saw in the poster that made him smile so.

Saffron and Stone Down South in Kollur

I’m not sure if Kadavil Appu Kuttan is still alive as I write this. I’m not sure either if I can find out if he is alive, and I doubt if anyone can unless Appu Kuttan has returned home to Kerala to his sister Janaki’s house in Trichur, ‘near Guruvayoor temple’, or maybe to his younger brother Ramkrishna’s place not far from there. Appu Kuttan has no family of his own. He never married. However there’s just a chance that I could get some news of him if I were to return to the Mookambika temple in Kollur and enquire with the other sadhus there who’ve made the place their home and live out their days in the temple complex.

The younger among them go on pilgrimages like Appu Kuttan once did long before he turned 86 in the year I met him. But I’m not sure if I’ll be returning to Kollur anytime soon unless I make an impromptu decision to pack my bags and take off to Murudeshwar like I did that year when I went backpacking down south along India’s West Coast.


But I must tell you his story even if it is over three years old, not that there is much to tell because I was in a hurry to get back to the hotel in Murudeshwar that day since the last bus for Byndoor left Mookambika temple at quarter past seven in the evening. To get to Murudeshwar I had to change the bus at Byndoor for Bhatkal before changing again at Bhatkal for Murudeshwar. So Appu Kuttan and I spoke for barely an hour before I sprinted to the Mookambika bus-stand just in time for the 4.45 PM bus to Byndoor.

Kadavil Appu Kuttan told me nothing earth shaking in that one hour. Actually I had serious difficulty understanding what he was saying for, his native tongue, Malayalam, weighed heavily on his Hindi. Moreover, he was old, all of 86 years, and that added to the problem. But somehow, Appu Kuttan and I managed to talk to each other – an old man and a young backpacker trying to connect in a place that was neither’s home.

Earlier in the day I left for Bhatkal after lunch at the newly opened Kamat's eatery down the street from the Murudeshwar temple the village takes its name from, in the backdrop of the gigantic statue of Lord Shiva rising majestically over a narrow stretch of beach where fishermen set off for deep waters early each morning, and mending fishing nets at other times. Narayan Naik waits tables at the Kamat’s eatery and on learning that I was visiting Murudeshwar he said, “Tourists prefer Surmai and Pomfret fished off the coast around here. They don’t have a taste for Noglaa and Bangda.” Narayan of the ready smile was built thin and came from a nearby village. I finished the vegetarian thali, paid the bill and left the hotel. Outside, fisherwomen sat by the side of a rutted path that led to the temple behind me, selling fish from cane baskets lined with sliced rubber tubes sourced from used truck tyres. Glassy-eyed fish lay still in small pools of water in rubber tubing drawing interested customers.


After changing to a Kundapur bound bus at Bhatkal, passing Gulmohar, Copper pod, Cashew, and Casuarina trees along the route I got off at Byndoor and sat out twenty minutes at a wayside inn before boarding a privately owned bus for Kollur. A short way off Byndoor the bus veered left, off the NH17 that ran on 69 kms. to Udupi, Mangalore lay 60 kms. off Udupi. “Government buses do not ply to Kollur, you’ll get private buses though,” the Inn keeper had told me while we were discussing the Raghavendra Swami Muth, a local landmark. The stretch to Kollur from Byndoor ran 27 kms. through lush green fields, isolated homesteads, and past little or no traffic on the narrow winding road through dense forests in the Mookambika Wildlife Sanctuary, home to the dreaded King Cobra.

Narrow strips of wood ran diagonally across from opposite sides of windows of houses scattered along the route, forming diamond shaped openings encasing deep pools of black of the rooms. I could only imagine what must lie behind those openings, and of how the light might play out once the Sun came in through the windows. A brooding sky hug overhead, overcast and threatening heavy rain. Mist covered the mountains in the distance as a light drizzle fell outside. Vyavashaya Seva Bank disappeared round the bend as we drove through Yedathare in the hills. In a clearing by an Areca Nut plantation a group of village boys were playing Kabaddi. We passed a school, scattered houses, and a few shops before the jungle swallowed us again.

I had a sadhu for company in the bus. He sat to my left and remained silent the entire journey, never once turning to look at me after I slid into the seat beside him. Leaning my head against the backrest of the seat in front I looked past the sadhu through the window at the vegetation flashing past as the bus rumbled on to Kollur. Somewhere deep in the jungle Agnitirtha and Sauparnika flowed, regenerating life far beyond their banks, and steeped in history they carried downstream echoes from centuries ago.

Kollur lies on the banks of the Sauparnika at the foot of the Kodachadri hills where Adi Sankara, the pioneering Hindu philosopher, is believed to have meditated on his travels across India. It was known as Maharanyapura in the Skanda Purana before changing to Kolapura after Kola rishi, the sage advised by Lord Shiva to worship Shakti, the lingam that is believed to have appeared on its own (swayambhu) in Maharanyapura, promising him that in due course Mahalakshmi would manifest from Shakti. After Vagdevi, the Goddess of Speech, struck the demon Kaumasura dumb or mooka, eventually killing him to end the reign of terror he had unleashed on the ascetics of Kolapura, including Kola rishi, the goddess came to reside in the swayambhu lingam in the temple and came to be known as Mookambika. In due course, Kolapura changed to Kollur.

The bus pulled up into the Mookambika bus-stand shortly after and I got off and made for the temple. It was Onam and large numbers of devotees from Kerala and elsewhere had traveled to the temple to offer prayers. Clad in pale white saris with gold borders, flowers adorning their hair, women waited by the side of the road that ran by the temple. On nearing the Mookambika temple I saw the stone structure and the golden gopura through the entrance, rising against the backdrop of Kodachadri hills in the distance. As I walked past a group of workers laying the courtyard floor anew and entered the main temple, a priest hissed at me, “Take off your shirt. Take it off.” I took off my shirt and joined the queue of bare-chested male devotees inching in a single file between ancient stone pillars.


Later I walked across the courtyard to the other temple entrance that led out the perimeter wall enclosing the courtyard. On my way out the high wooden door I passed two stepped platforms flanking the passage to the entrance I had just exited. Elderly sadhus in saffron sat conversing on straw mats spread out on the red oxide coated platform. Some of the sadhus were deep in sleep, their worldly possessions stuffed in bags that doubled up as pillows. It was while he was spreading the cardboard mattress on the platform, possibly preparing for a nap, that I first saw Appu Kuttan, a solitary figure in deep pink lungi that came up to his ankles as he bent over the platform to adjust the cardboard mattress.

Introductions in place, Appu Kuttan allowed himself a gentle smile on seeing me taken aback after he had just told me that he had served in the British India army. On demobilizing in 1948, and without a job he began drifting, not becoming a sadhu until he had turned sixty. “I didn’t get any job after my discharge from the army so I became a sadhu,” he said matter-of-factly as I crossed my legs and sat across from him, warming to the conversation. He lit up a beedi and sat cross-legged on the edge of the nylon mat, the beedi stayed firm between his index and middle finger. Recalling the good times when he earned a ‘good salary’ while working in Aurangabad where the “Quartermaster also worked”, Appu Kuttan soldiered for the British Indian Army for eight long years during World War Two, serving in Singapore for a year where the British Army retreated under the Japanese onslaught, and six months in Rangoon where the Allied Army led by the British fought the Japanese to a standstill in the jungles of Burma before routing them in the same jungles, then in the mountains and across the Burmese plains, possibly handing Japan their biggest land defeat until then, and largely orchestrated by Indian soldiers in their thousands, fighting alongside the Burmese, the Karens, and the Kachins.

“I did not swing guns on the battlefield,” Appu Kuttan recalled. “I served in the 37 Field Ambulance Unit on the frontlines. We took our lunch in the trenches, sheltering from Japanese planes on bombing runs.” At this juncture he raises his hands, imitating the Japanese planes swooping down to drop their loads behind British lines. Allied troops were battling to keep China’s overland supply route through Burma open while Japan sought to cut it off. The Burma campaign began disastrously for the British in the December of 1941, with thousands of Indian soldiers in the British India army losing their lives to the Japanese and disease, malaria being rife in the swamps. By mid 1945 the tide had turned, and the Japanese were in full retreat.

“We took many Japanese prisoners in Rangoon,” Appu Kuttan said, a smile breaking on his lips at the memory as he exhaled after drawing deep on his beedi. “Japanese Officers were made to sweep. They would ask us for Goodbye cigarettes,” he said. “Eighteen of us in the Army company did not smoke, so we gave the prisoners our stock of Goodbye cigarettes.”

On joining the army at the “age of 18”, his first posting was Pune, then Aurangabad, before he was sent to Shillong for a year where he was entrusted with the logistics of distributing ration to Army Companies. “Gaadi leke ration ke liye chalo,” he recollects Karunakaran, a driver from Thiruanantpuram, telling him one day at the army camp. From Shillong he marched with the army to Rangoon serving with the 37 Field Ambulance Unit before leaving for Singapore for a year. I turned my head for a brief moment in the direction of animated voices behind me before quickly turning to Appu Kuttan.

“Capt. Lakshmi Sehgal of the INA was arrested in Singapore and held in our prison camp for a day,” he recollected, his eyes lighting up at the memory which I took to be less for the arrest as for her presence in their midst. As he spoke of her I couldn't help noticing his voice rise up a notch in what was otherwise a phlegmatic undertone that sometimes shook, struggled and faded. His age showed up in his voice, again.

Long before Lakshmi Sehgal, born Lakshmi Swaminathan in a Tamil brahmin family, joined the Indian National Army, she was putting her medical education to good use among the poor of Singapore after leaving India for Singapore in 1940, and after the British army fell to the Japanese in the ill fated Singapore campaign in World War II, she served the Prisoners of War, a significant number of whom were Indians. It was inevitable that she came in contact with the Indian National Army headed by Subhash Chandra Bose, born in an affluent Bengali brahmin family, then actively recruiting Indian POWs from the British Army to staff the Indian Liberation Army. The Japanese were only too happy to see this happen. And when Subhash Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore in July, 1943, and raised the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, a women’s regiment, the mantle of Colonel fell on Lakshmi Sehgal, fighting the British on the side of the Japanese.

Appu Kuttan turns back the years. “Lieutenant Colonel Satchidananda Swami commanded us in Singapore and Major David reported to him at the time. Now Swami Satchidananda lives at Anandashram in Kanhangad in the Kasargod district of Kerala.” Known as Anantasivan in his pre-monastic years, Swami Satchidananda came to the Ashram on being urged by one of his former colleagues (possibly Sam Rose) from the Army in 1948, the year Appu Kuttan returned from Singapore and was demobilized from the British India Army soon after India’s independence.

Pauses punctuate his recollections. Never once in the entire duration did he take his eyes off me. When I ask him if he visits his native state Kerala, he replies, “Aata hai, Jaata hai. Time doesn’t pass there. But here (at the temple), time passes. We (the sadhus) talk, and time passes. We sleep by ten in the night.”

After visiting temples all over India, and barely surviving malaria after the Badrinath yatra, and living at the Krishna temple in Ujjain for six years, and six months in Goa 'in between' where he claimed “some Malabari people know me well there”, Appu Kuttan eventually made Mookambika temple his home the last nineteen of the twenty five years as a sadhu. He sleeps in the temple shelter after he left the pujari’s (a priest) house on being asked to pay a monthly rent of 450 rupees, money he didn’t have. “I get meals twice a day at the temple here, and a paratha (a type of bread) from a shop nearby, and then I sleep here,” he said.

A short distance away to our right, under a makeshift tent that kept out the September sun, twenty-odd artisans chiseled away in a random yet rhythmic melody of chisel striking stone, fashioning largish stone slabs that four youth loaded into their handcart before carrying it through the door and into the courtyard where workers were laying a part of the floor anew. Then they came back for more, laughing and joking as they pushed their handcart to the rhythmic clicks of metal against stone in the time that Appu Kuttan and I sat conversing while the clock ticked to the beat of those soothing metallic clicks at a place that history had seemingly rented out for posterity.

As I prepared to leave, I motioned to the camera indicating that I wanted to photograph him. I barely noticed him smile under the white beard. While I readied the camera he told me that he was filmed along with another sadhu in Trichur when he was visiting his sister sometime ago, “TV ne pakda,” he said. I took a few pictures, cautious not to run through the three film rolls I had carried along for the trip. Then I shook his hand and swung my legs over the platform, onto the floor. After sitting there facing Appu Kuttan and the wall behind him, it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the glare of the Sun beyond the shade of the platform.

With a short wave of his hand he saw me off as I got down from the platform. By now we had attracted the attention of other sadhus sitting on the opposite platform, his ‘other family’ far away from a home he never really had, and with no one to wait for him in the night and wonder where he was if he got late, Kadavil Appu Kuttan had made the sky his roof and the earth his home. Freedom would come from fires entrusting him to the winds, scattering him where he had once walked, and in the rivers he once prayed to, before carrying him to the ocean, back to where some people say life began.

The Remains of the Day

The rail bridge over the Zuari runs parallel to the road bridge. From the window I watch vehicles speed over the bridge in the direction of Panjim (the capital of Goa), but soon we leave them behind as the Mandovi Express puffs her lungs out and lunges forward on her run north along the West Coast. To my left, a fork in the road splits into two, one ascends the bridge while the other runs on to Vasco, passing Sancoale on the way.

I trail my eyes over the spans to my left, held up by six visible pillars, and then linger for a second where both ends of the bridge disappear into a mass of green trees. For a moment I imagine I’m watching a tree bridge held up at both ends by dark green, leafy pillars. I count fourteen pigeons keep pace with us. Time goes still as the behemoth rattles over the bridge against the placid backdrop of the Zuari, only the metal girders flashing past in quick succession confirm our progress across the waist of the Zuari before she flares out into buxom curves, distancing Marmagoa (also spelled Mormugao) taluka from Tiswadi along the contours of an open mouth; the Marmagoa bay. To the south of the bay lies Marmagoa taluka. The city of Vasco sits on its lower lip. From Velsao where I visited Philip’s place sometime ago one can see planes take off and land at Dabolim airport.

In the late evening as we stood on the beach, facing the Sun go down on a fishing trawler returning ashore with its catch of Mullets (shevto in Konkani), Philip pointed out the darkening silhouette of the landmass to our right, jutting out into the sea and obscuring the Marmagoa harbour on the other side. It reminded me of a giant table rising from the sea where the gods sit down to early dinner, watching the Sun go down as a reluctant twilight prepares to bring the curtain down on the day. Unlike buses, or for that matter, trains, there is nothing to tell where planes are headed. A road or a railway track point in a definite direction, a peg in the Earth, a fixture, a steady, identifiable landscape. Up in the sky there is none.

We pass over the Sancoale creek that abuts Sancoale, a small village before Chicalim on the way to Vasco. From the time I first heard Sancoale pronounced ‘Saanq-Oooaal’ as a kid, I hung on to the notion that the sea must have spoken the name using a conch, rolling its tongue to be heard over the lapping waves – ‘Saanq-Oooal’. This was way before I visited Sancoale. It still evokes the feel of a faraway place; somewhere you will never visit but never stop imagining what it must be like to be there either. Eventually I did visit it three times. On one of the trips, Jaggu and I rode the long afternoon from the hinterland, lugging cameras and heading to wherever our fancy took us, even if it meant free-riding sixty kilometers in the blazing Goan Sun. Any place was good enough if it promised memorable photographs, a rustic wayside inn to stop for a pao-bhaji and empty roads to free-ride with the wind in the teeth. And Sancoale in that one image of the whitewashed façade of the Our Lady of Health church, only its front wall now survives the fire of 1834 and the vagaries of age ever since, standing against a deep blue sky, almost defiant in its centuries-old ruins, and marked by refugee-like barrenness of overhanging branches of a nearby tree, stands fixed in my memory like a rusted spear tip in fluorescent blue jelly.

Facing the façade I looked up and traced my eyes along the uneven laterite contours, wondering what must it be to stand alone in a reminder of an age long past, and for a purpose long replaced. Wisps of clouds broke through the branches, setting off the façade in patches of discontinuous deep blue skies. I knelt to take pictures while Jaggu looked around. Skeletal branches cast weak shadows around my feet. A few metres to our left a narrow strip drew up short into the flanks of the estuary. Here the Zuari flows into the Arabian Sea.

A narrow canoe lay anchored to a wooden peg driven into the ground among the mangroves. Broken footwear, pieces of nylon ropes, runaway fishing-net floaters and sundry little debris lay washed up in small laterite rocks piled up on the sides, fashioned to hold back incoming tides. They had met their ‘reefs’ and reduced to debris they now spoke of fishermen and fishing. I wondered if the footwear belonged to a dead man, and whether he had died of drowning, and whether he had drowned from being pushed out at sea. Somehow I felt that such an end seemed likely in the setting the ruins commanded. There was every likelihood the flotsam might have resulted from a fate as innocuous as someone casting away their worn footwear let alone a sinister end in the middle of the sea, but I was not prepared to concede that possibility; believing instead in the forlornness of the landscape abutting the sea and the dark promise it held for an unsuspecting victim. A black dog regarded us nervously as we took in the silence, and contemplated our strangely disquieting setting. In such places, noises cease to be noises, instead they voice the silence of the departed, and the rage of those whom time left behind.

On our way out we passed a low laterite wall fencing off the property. A jamun tree grew over the other side of the wall, and some of its branches reached over the laterite wall where we had parked the bike. Three kids, not older than nine years, were busy collecting jamuns. Two of them stood beneath the tree, holding awkwardly an oversized fishing net to prevent fleshy jamuns from squashing to the ground as they fell. The third was up in the tree, shaking jamuns loose. I picked up some jamuns where they had fallen to the ground on our side of the wall, and brushing off the soil against the seat of my pants I popped them into the mouth. Then I stuck my tongue out to see if it had changed to the colour of the jamuns – inky violet, like I used to do growing up. It had, to the colour of Camel Ink. Old habits die hard.

The setting sun lit up in a shade of gold the fishing net and the two boys straining to hold up its ends. I paused to take their pictures before kicking the bike to life, and entrusting the ruins to the remains of the day, we rode away into the sunset.

Alone at the Top

It was at the turn in the road to Paikul that we saw this lone tree on the hill. On our way up the slope the dense undergrowth tore at my shirt and skin as we crashed the spiny carpet of green. Jaggu followed closely behind. In time we got up there and as I looked up at the leafless tree the Sun stared back hard. There was something about the barren tree I couldn't quite fathom as it reared up to the Sun, matching its fierce glare with the intensity of its own desolation. They stood toe to toe as I wiped away thin trails of blood welling up on my forearms where the thorns had caught them.

Sometimes I pull out this picture and look at it and wonder if I missed anything I shouldn't have.

The tree on the hill
Is bereft of leaves,
In a frenzy of joy
They had once danced themselves loose.

Where Scarecrows Walk

I do not remember how long it took me to get these pictures that summer day in Carambolim. However, what I do remember is waiting by the side of the road under the shade of coconut palms and mango trees while a light breeze blew across the paddy fields carrying with it excited chatter of Purple Moorhens flocking in the lake behind me. I had walked across the road after the Bronze Winged Jacana that I was watching while it glided on ungainly legs, deftly stepping on Salvinia weeds in the lake as it went about looking for fishes, had moved further back until it became a dot in the far distance, in the direction of the church at Old Goa. I found it rather surprising because on my bird watching trips to the lake over the years I was used to seeing the Bronze Winged Jacana fishing in the waters by the side of the road that split the lake into a 'water catchment' at one end, and paddy fields on the other.

Letting the breeze run over me, I sat on dry grass facing the rice fields on the shoulder of the road that led up to the railway tracks to my right before bifurcating into two; one road ran east in the direction of Neura where Joseph once drove Ajay and me to the church that sits on the hill overlooking a vast stretch of open land cut by narrow slivers of water that I believe draw sustenance from the Zuari, and the other ran on to Old Goa in the opposite direction.

From the parapet of the wall that fenced off the church from the sloping hill I gazed at the scene opening out in the distance. It is rare to see large open spaces in Goa amid what is essentially Western Ghats territory; mountains and hills largely shaping the terrain even as the topography levels out as it descends to the West Coast by the Arabian sea.

Portions of wetlands around Goa were converted into farm lands years ago, drawing water from wetlands. At Carambolim sluice gates control the flow of water from the lake to the paddy fields across the road, and while it sustains the farmers it drains the lake of water, turning the wetland at Carambolim (also spelled Karmali) into soggy landmass by winter when the first of the migratory birds begin to land in the lake. Their numbers have reduced over the years from the thousands in the 1980s to a straggling few at the turn of the century. By February it runs dry.

An occasional vehicle passed by on the narrow road behind me. The paddy fields were empty of farmers who had recessed for lunch in the shade at the base of the bund where I sat watching Cattle Egrets poised attentively over water channels irrigating the rice crops, their eyes peeled out for fishes floating in the water sourced from the lake behind me.

A scarecrow stood in the middle, set off by the green of the paddy crop. For a scarecrow I thought he was dressed well. Peering through the lens I waited for the Cattle Egret to move into the frame before letting the shutter land. I believe the scarecrow did not take too kindly to someone picking off from under his nose even if it was only fishes that the Egret was after and not grain because no sooner had I snapped the lever back to load the next frame the Egret took off.

In paddy fields around Goa you can hear stories of scarecrows that take their jobs seriously even if it means that they have to come to life to hustle out winged folks who challenge their authority.

If you've heard it before, you've probably heard right. Scarecrows can walk, and in Goa they do.

The Night and Us

In 1997 the comet Hale-Bopp took hold of our imagination like no other celestial event had in my lifetime except maybe the Solar Eclipse of 1995. We decided it was not enough that we merely see the comet, we had to photograph it. Ten years ago a camera was still a big thing, and digital cameras were unheard of. So when Magan got hold of an SLR, we decided it was time we went looking for the Big Guy. This is a recollection of that trip and of the picture above that Magan took that day.

It took a long time coming before Magan and I actually hit the road in pursuit of the Hale-Bopp. Until then several early morning chases had turned up a blank, most notably the one with Naguesh. After no amount of knocking Jaggu's door in the dark of night had elicited a squeak, Naguesh and I struck out for the plateau before dawn broke over the Engineering College and sat out the dark hours on the plateau garotted by laterite that had changed color to black from being exposed to the elements for hundreds and thousands of years. There we sat, shivering in the cold, and eyes peeled out for the comet in the skies overhead, a Star Dial in my hands but no Hale-Bopp. To this day I cannot understand how Hale-Bopp eluded us that day. And when a herd of buffaloes paused to look at us on their way to their grazing grounds we knew it was time to pack up and try another day. So when Magan suggested that rather than look for it in the early morning hours we should try late evening hours, I readily agreed. We took a different route from the earlier ones.

With my back weighed down by a rucksack packed with camera equipment; a SLR, a tripod, binoculars and a refractor telescope, Magan and I wound our way past the Ajanta Cashew factory, along Cashewnut plantations that swarmed up the hill, broken only in pockets by towering Betel nut palms and a smattering of Jackfruit trees whose fruits hung from the stem like bags under weary eyes. Flat terrain broke into view as the bike laboured up the hill through Priol and into Kerim, a sleepy village nestled in the heart of Goa. Then, a rebellious gravel path veered off the road in Kerim. The road runs on to Savoiverem before drawing up short at the ferry point connecting Volvoi to Maina Surla across the river Mandovi where large barges load Iron Ore from the mines across the river before transporting them to far shores while leaving behind barren land that has turned red in angst.

We took the gravel path in Kerim at the turn guarded by a small semi circular temple called Bhooth Khamba, where cane baskets and small change are offered by worshippers and travelers to appease the resident ghost, believed to menace lonely travelers. Saffron flags fly from staffs affixed to the top of the temple. Across the road from the Bhooth Khamba, bang opposite the gravel road running past the hill we were now making for lay the memorial to Nilesh Naik, a local youth killed in the police firing during the anti-Nylon 6,6 agitation. Thapar-DuPont eventually pulled out of Kerim in face of implacable opposition to the project by local villagers who feared pollution from the plant. It was possibly among the few successful ‘environmental’ agitations in independent India. The gravel path ran on to the now abandoned offices of Thapar-DuPont. Amid broken bottles littering the place, grafitti covered walls stand testimony to plans gone horribly wrong. Occasionally village youth sit among its ruins, drawn to it as much by an association that defined Kerim as by its desolateness in the middle of seemingly nowhere. I had sensed a strange disquiet among the ruins on an earlier trip there.

It was late evening when we took the turn and bumped along the path, pulling up by the side of the hill a short run later, the bike groaning and slipping in the loose gravel. The hill stood dark and large. In the dark even the gentlest of hills take on an ominous character that belies their very raison d'etre. Even in that little light, for, light drops even quicker in the hills, I could see that this hill was different. The massive block of laterite, turned black by unrelenting exposure to the elements, showed in its uneven edges that could quickly cut skin if you were careless. Stony hills rarely have the gentle curves that other hills do. Somehow, I believe this gives them an implacable, unforgiving character not unlike the reputation the village acquired in the middle of its stand-off with the administration over the Nylon 6,6 plant.

In fast fading light, guided by a feeble pen-torch that Magan had carried along to help him set up the telescope and camera attachments, we made our way to the hill more by remembered instinct than by any visible signs to guide us. A previous memory from an outing to another hill where we had seen a Cobra among jagged laterite mounds, rushed to the fore as I negotiated the dark, sharp edges on the way to the base of the hill. I determinedly pushed the thought of another unscheduled encounter from my mind as Magan made his way ahead.

It was the first of April and Hale-Bopp was on its last perihelion before pulling away from the Sun on its way out into deep space, not returning until 4380 unless Jupiter exerts sufficient pull to further skew up the date. With skies conducive for photographing the comet, we ascended the rocky summit that had flattened out into jagged edges of laterite. It was past seven in the evening and a calm breeze soothed our wait for the celestial visitor.

We had the whole hill to ourselves. In the distance to the west, rolling hills beaded the horizon, allowing a faint view of the massive radio towers on Taleigao plateau, a good part of thirty kilometres away, maybe less as the crow flies. To our left a small vale opened out, trees crowding it's rim, and between them reflected slivers of the Kerim water body. Along it outline, lined by brooding trees, snaked a thread of a road, an occasional vehicle droning past.

All fell silent. I sat facing the Western skies. The last vestiges of barely visible twilight hung tenaciously over the undulating necklace of hills. Lapwings flew across my face, twittering home. The sky was shedding it's blue gown for a more appropriate black for the approaching night.

Gradually, emerging from the silent darkness in the North-Western skies, was the comet, a celestial tattoo on the body of the mysterious universe. The only sounds were of vegetation swishing in the breeze and the whirr of the camera shutter release in the background as Magan shot frame after frame of the comet. The atmosphere was unreal. Before me, beneath Perseus, despite hurtling at over 16 kms per second, millions of kilometres away, the comet appeared to rest content in the skies, pampered by the warm brightness of the Milky Way stretching across the skies overhead. The setting seemed complete.

Then it got pitch dark. The Big Dipper in the north was keeping the Pole star company like it had for millions of years. Behind us to the east Mars glared down with blood-shot eyes, and below it lay the inverted L of Virgo. Leo stretched across lazily. Corvus and Orion as striking as ever, beckoning our gaze upwards to partake of the show put up by the skies, a royal welcome for Hale-Bopp. We might as well have been sitting in a planetarium and not realized it, intruding into celestial matters.

Sitting there I thought of the things people think of when overwhelmed by nature. A human lifetime, human distances, mobility and the like pale into insignificance when juxtaposed with celestial magnitudes. The unknown excites imagination. What was I in the larger scheme of things evident in the little that was on display that night?

I wondered if someone like me sat on this very hill when the comet last visited Earth over 4,000 years ago and as I looked up at the stars twinkling away mischievously I was certain there were many among them so far away that I was seeing them now as they existed at the birth of mankind. What then had they been witness to which they cannot communicate to me just as the streaking wonder before me cannot regale me of the world it passed by on it's last visit, four millennia ago. As we retraced our path I looked up at the comet and bade goodbye 'like me you'll go away but when you return someone else will wonder about you and his place in the world.'

And we left the night behind in the silence of its interminable pauses. The kick caught on and the bike roared, shattering the silence of the heavens.